Ah. Well. Umm. So. Well. OK. The good news is that Threesome is the first original scripted comedy ever commissioned by Comedy Central (UK) and we must always welcome new tributaries to the dangerously small gene pool in whose barely oxygenated shallows little but repeats of Scrubs, Everybody Loves Raymond, Scrubs, Sex and the City, Friends and Scrubs survive.

Mitch, Alice (boyfriend and girlfriend) and Richard (gay, but, it turns out, prepared to make an exception in special circumstances) share a flat and, one drunken night, a bed and Alice's vagina. Alas, they use one of those heavily perforated sitcom condoms and Alice is, inevitably, up-duffed. Off she heads to the abortion clinic. In the nick of time, the boys decide that they could all raise the baby together and race down there to stay the curetter's hand. All assume Mitch is the father (which seemed idiotic, until I deduced that Alice must be on the pill for him and that only Richard was required to rubber up – God, even a comedy show involving troilism is complicated. I don't know how real life sexual adventurers find the energy) until his application to be a sperm donor reveals that he is sterile. After some momentary heartsearching, they decide to stick to the plan, throw away their drugs and learn to hallucinate through baby-induced sleep deprivation instead.

The bad news is the laughs are as few and far between as Mitch's spermatozoa. Most of the jokes are heavily telegraphed and when an ancient, wizened nut of a gag rolls across the floor it is smashed to lifeless smithereens by a sledgehammer delivery by one of the three.

But, but – when it's not trying to be funny, it's very funny. In the little asides, the throwaway comments, the cast have a lightness of touch that you wish they could deploy throughout. In the second episode, they start to sound a little more like real friends, real people. If you were being generous you could say it was still pregnant with possibilities.